"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act," said George Orwell in 1984.

This happens every day in Malaysia as Umno, and the National Front (BN) coalition it leads, insists truth is what it insists it is, not what it is. The mainstream media helps it along, but it - radio, television, newspapers - is disbelieved because it defies the public interest.

The Umno-led BN needs all the help it needs, but it cried wolf, and imposed its authoritarian will, once too often and instead chases its own tail. It believed it had the monopoly of truth, and damned any other, and its supporters. Truth is how it is perceived.

With Umno in total control, its truth, especially its communal and racial politics, cloathed in a veneer of multiracialism, the only truth. In time it enveloped authoritarian leaders who demanded that what they believed and did were also truth personified, and unquestionable. Umno believed it, and its supreme leader, controlled all levers of power, and who defied it to be humiliated and damned.

Malay culture insists on an unquestioned, and unquestionable, autocratic leader, who holds office so long as he does not, for one, ever humiliate his chieftains. In every culture and society, similar rules hold, the leader flawed when he defies them often in arrogance. In time, in every society, leaders fall out of line and unceremoniously consigned to its dung heap.

Those who survive with respect and honour observe the underlying cultural rules. But arrogance and superciliousness often takes hold, the leader presumes he can do no wrong, begins to believe the people in whose name he rules are stupid and malleable, and he can ride roughshod over them. He cannot. The longer he is in office, the more carefully he must adhere to cultural norms of power and leadership.